Good evening, friends and neighbors!
With the warmer spring weather, I’ve been making a point of getting out on the deck a bit more (you may have noticed a theme in my Instagram recently…)
Let’s face it- when you’re in food service, a sunny afternoon on the porch is likely the closest thing I’ll get to a vacation for a while.
Good afternoon, friends and neighbors!
It’s been a minute (and two jobs) since I wrote one of these entries, and it’s something a lot of folks ask me about:
“What’s it like being the morning baker/ ovenmaster in a French bakery?”
Well here we go.
Good afternoon, friends and neighbors!
Even as affairs in American kitchens are slowly changing from the bad old days, one aspect of the Kitchen Life still holds up:
The professional kitchen is a meritocracy.
You either can do the job, or you can be TAUGHT to do the job, or you can’t. Doesn’t matter where you went to school, who you know, how many cookbooks you have.
You can either show up, on time, in the right state of mind, and do the job like you said you could… or you can’t.
That said, the space between arrival and the last two week of a position can be… colorful, to say the least.
Good evening, friends and neighbors.
We cooks exist outside of our natural habitat, you know.
We can breathe atmospheric air, are generally harmless unless provoked, and can even function in polite society.
Not necessarily that we LIKE it, of course… but we can.
Good morning, friends and neighbors!
We get bombarded by stereotypes these days, and whether we buy into them or not is our own call. Age groups, races, political affiliations, and so on.
The trouble with stereotypes is that, to some degree, they all have a seed of truth.
“Jews become doctors/accountants/lawyers”, for example, because studying, analysis, debate, and intellectualism are a big part of Jewish life and faith.
Obviously, stereotypes are by definition generalizations, which are always foolish. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would want me to represent them in court, or balance their books.
It’s an interesting thing, though, to be conscious of a stereotype of one’s own group and actively seek to embody it. The stereotypes can act as identifiers for the group- a way for the members to set themselves apart from others, and even revel in it.
Yes, I love lox and cream cheese bagels and matzo ball soup- #jewishastevye.
When joining a new group, though, those very actions can be interpreted negatively as being misinformed or “being a try-hard.”
Here’s a story from the kitchen of someone I know. It’s about how actively pursuing the stereotypes you think will ingratiate can actually alienate, the (hopefully) changing face of kitchen life, and how old souls spend their evenings.
The Black Hat Baker 